With music covering everything from rock and metal to hip hop and dance, Oxfordshire's Wakestock festival is one of the most diverse celebrations of cutting edge talent around.

This unique combination of watersport and new music, which takes place from June 27 to 29, at Blenheim Palace, will attract tens of thousands of thrill-seekers from across the country.

Born out of a beach party for devotees of the sport of wakeboarding - surfing behind speedboats - the event has grown into one of the biggest parties of the summer.

Among the highlights are a bunch of young artists who inspire such devotion that they crowd surf before the band have even started - Hadouken!

Things have moved fast for Hadouken! since they broke out of the Leeds scene a little over a year ago.

Since then, they've rocked the Reading Festival, toured the length and breadth of the land, built an insanely devoted online fanbase, inspired a whole range of DIY clothing, produced the world's first ever USB-only release, released a debut album, and grown into one of the most forward-thinking bands in the country.

Oh, and their tune Leap Of Faith was named by Radio 1's Zane Lowe as both Hottest Record In The World and his Record Of the Week. Phew!

Named after a move in the Street Fighter computer game, Hadouken! are best described as sonic terrorists, leaping from post-hardcore to drum'n'bass and indie rock.

Incredibly, they have been together for less than two years.

Frontman James Smith had been going out with keyboardist Alice Spooner since they met doing a foundation course in their native Hertfordshire, but it wasn't until they both moved to Leeds and met guitarist Dan Rice that their maverick musical ideas began to blossom.

Adopting their trademark DIY ethos, Dan and James started putting out limited edition vinyls on their own Surface Noise label, before realising their obsession with music would be best served in their own band.

They recruited Dan's younger brother Nick on drums, and bassist Chris - a friend of Nick's from the Academy Of Contemporary Music in Guilford. And they set out to do their very own thing.

One thing they don't like, is pigeonholing. Says James: "We'd only been around a couple of months and the critics had already called us a new-rave band, a 'grindie' band, and an ironic scenester band.

"We want to show people they shouldn't put us in boxes. Our music comes from the heart. There's lyrics about gang violence and teenage pregnancy. But it's about middle England, from the perspective of your average kid with divorced parents but not in absolute poverty.

"We're influenced as much by System Of A Down or Rage Against The Machine as we are by grime."

It wasn't long before the band's eclectic taste fizzled together to produce some rather tasty sonic treats.

And their genre-vaulting songs have defined them as a band that could only ever exist now - representing the mix'n'match, guilt-free, try-anything approach to music.

"You're doing something wrong if you're pleasing everyone," says James.

"The next generation should annoy the older people. We want to make a dent in the musical history of the UK, so obviously we're gonna have to upset a few people along the way."

Hadouken! play Wakestock on June 27.